Casting the heretic out of the forest

An estate owner in a woodsy New England vacation enclave for the rich writes to his neighbors, who rely on a limited collection of colorful locals for every job that requires physical strength and practical skill.

I am no longer employing the [Heretics] due to their refusal to be vaccinated. I am clearly in the camp that embraces the proven science that the vaccines are safe and necessary to help our civilization resist this terrible disease. One that should never have created such havoc throughout the world and our country whose leaders did not take the virus serious until much too late. There will be well over 1 million of our fellow citizens dead shortly and I have no tolerance for anyone who believes their “bodily autonomy” is more important than the health of our communities. [Heretic 1] did some incredible work for us and our property has his fingerprints all over it and I will be forever grateful but refusing to get the jab is too much for me to tolerate. Since about 30% of our country refuses to follow the strong advise and instructions from the world’s most brilliant epidemiologists and medical scientists and our ultra-conservative activist Supreme Court justices are allowing this idiocy to continue, it is likely that some of you don’t agree with me and that is your choice but I am resolved in my conviction. I have fired my tax accountant and stopped doing business with any entity refusing vaccines and masks. [A nearby Deplorable service business] will forever be off my list.

What was Heretic 1’s job? Forester. In other words, the unvaccinated individual would be out in the forest and never anywhere near the owner’s Covid-safe bunker. The email, sent to about 15 neighbors, closes with a signature:

“Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.”
ETTY HILLESUM

(We can never have peace until all of the people with whom we do business agree with us politically.)

The neighbors respond supportively. Example:

Hi [Righteous Democrat], thanks for the latest news and especially for confirming about the [Heretics] and [Another Deplorable]. I too have been very concerned about their refusing to get vaccinated.

A former Californian weighs in on the above issue:

(“Trying to follow the science of the protected needing protection from the unprotected by forcing the unprotected to use the protection that doesn’t protected the protected.”)

20 thoughts on “Casting the heretic out of the forest

  1. Calif* removed its mask mandate for the 2nd time in 2 years today. The party faithful will keep them on of course. Hard to believe they would require masks again, since they finally admitted the previous criteria for mask removal was unattainable.

    • Or anyone in Los Angeles, where we can have a super spreader bowl of 200,000 people but I can’t go unmasked to buy some essential marijuana.

  2. History lesson, the 1885 smallpox pandemic and the global protest against mandatory vax:

    > … the original smallpox vaccine was an unusually harmful vaccination that was never tested before being adopted. It increased, rather than decreased smallpox outbreaks. As the danger and inefficacy became known, increasing public protest developed towards vaccination. Yet, as smallpox increased, governments around the world instead adopted more draconian mandatory vaccination policies. Eventually, one of the largest protests of the century occurred in 1885 in Leicester (an English city). Leicester‘s government was replaced, mandatory vaccination abolished, and public health measures rejected by the medical community were implemented. These measures were highly successful, and once adopted globally ended the smallpox epidemic, something most erroneously believe arose from vaccination.

    https://pastebin.com/0fuPrA1q

  3. I recollect hearing that Canadian deer refuse to get vaccinated and spread the deadly virus. Could that be the concern here? Forester -> deer -> righteous population?

  4. Does the estate owner boycott Chinese products, since we are blessed by a yearly flu, SARS-Cov-1 and now Wuhan-1 to Wuhan-3 from that region? All due to either lax wet-market rules or lab leaks during research that was possibly funded by “the world’s most brilliant epidemiologists and medical scientists“!

    The signature is astonishing in the context of needlessly firing people.

    • The “peace” signature makes sense if you consider the peace that Americans on welfare enjoy after being fired, at least those who can get into public housing. No more rat race.

      Imagine if the U.S. welfare system had been around in the time of Siddhartha Gautama. Wouldn’t the Buddha have then told people not to chase after money by working in order to satisfy desires that, in fact, can never be satisfied? He could have suggested that everyone relax in public housing, be satisfied with what the government provides, play Xbox, etc. There is nothing in Buddhism that says it is a good idea to work at a W-2 job, right?

    • It is often repeated that desires can never be satisfied. I do not think that this is true. I see evidence to opposite everywhere, including in those satisfied with public housing. I know that math tells me at this rate of inflation, after and if it subsides to regular level, my current rate of earnings and asset appreciation will not be sufficient to my future relative happiness and I am ready to leave relatively calm lifestyle and re-enter rate race. I have been relatively satisfied up to last summer or so.

  5. I love the pompous tone — the writer seems to take himself & his deep thoughts with great aplomb.

    • @Toucan Sam: I wouldn’t waste the ammunition. My sense is that this person’s powers of reasoning are a greater threat to the country, but the remedy is not gunfire. I’m reasonably sure his ex-employees realize that also. They’ll find somewhere else to work if they’re any good.

  6. I assume that the dufus relies on ” limited collection of colorful locals” no longer. Is he going to import illegals to work his fields, pardon forests, to this local MA town? How is he going to check their certifications? I have seen such dufuses, they paid twice for messed up work to be broken up and redone by someone qualified and in process running into legal proceedings with local authorities for unsafe property conditions

  7. > One that should never have created such havoc throughout the world and our country whose leaders did not take the virus serious until much too late.

    The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine was at the NIH undergoing trials by March of 2000 under Orange Man and Operation Warp Speed accelerated things. One month before the election while waiting for Pfizer’s results, I remember listening daily to NPR commentators who were skeptical of the vaccine and OWS for the reason that a successful trial meant the Operation was rushed and the vaccine might therefore be unsafe because they would help Orange Man to be reelected.

    The narrative flipped 180 degrees exactly ONE WEEK after the election when Pfizer’s “95% effective” results were celebrated and the Pfizer CEO made pains to establish that they had never been a part of Operation Warp Speed.

    https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-design.html

    NOTE: New York Magazine actually tried to make the case in that article that the Trump Administration should have foreshortened the Moderna trials somehow and released the vaccine to the public PRIOR to the FDA’s “emergency authorization.”

    • By the way if you read the “nuance” in that article, the author doesn’t mean to suggest it NOW, but imagine if we COULD…that’s a critical piece of particularly impressive argument.

      Water under the bridge to me now, because as someone who tried to interpret the real meaning accurately, the most important Plague that this country needed to purge was Orange Man, and then all things would become, necessarily, much better under the Biden Administrations more steady and #Scientific leadership, so that we would be back to normal by the summer of 2021. The most important thing seemed to be that there was *no way in our Universe* that Orange Man would be able to take credit for a “safe and effective” vaccine prior to the election in November. That was more important than anything! in my mind.

      Thank our lucky stars and the power of #Science that it all worked out that way!

    • Sorry, March of 2020 above, not 2000. I wasn’t trying to be *intentionally* funny. Lol. But we sequenced the virus and we knew what it was in terms of its basic structure, airborne nature and many other things by March of 2020: a respiratory virus spread primarily as an aerosol, ~0.1 micron in diameter against which cloth masks are a funny joke but Zexy as leopard prints for women and especially as cloth masks for children, and for which nobody on Earth has ever made a successful vaccine against and probably *never will.*

      Here we are in 2022 turning the corner and acknowledging the reality that any competent virologist/epidemiologist like people from the Great Barrington Declaration knew all along, when they were dangerous heretical interlopers.

      By the way I’ve been to the Hospital today and not only was I wearing a fresh Aegle N95 mask, I was required to be *double masked* when I checked in! I said: “This is a brand-new N95. Why do I need this surgical mask too?” Answer: “Sir, this is our protocol.”

      Mine is not to quibble with this kind of reasoning, I had more important things to worry about, so double masks it was for me. I got to where I was going and my RN was wearing….a zexy black almost useless cloth mask, not even as good as the one the Hospital required me to strap on top of my N95!!! I was JEALOUS and thought of that mask porn post I wrote a few days ago while she stuck an IV into my hand.

  8. Casting out heretic people is not always enough. Public Health Scotland is following the #Science by casting out its heretic data. (See also.)

    The stated justification is that “population data used for the unvaccinated population is based on GP [family doctor] registration details, meaning it includes people who are registered but may not live in Scotland.” They don’t mention that Scotland’s population is increasing due to inward migration, i.e. of people less likely to be registered than long-term residents.

    • LP: Thanks for that first link. It is beautiful. Nobody should look at the actual numbers because a hypothetical model is much more accurate!

      “The case rates, hospitalisation rates, the death rates are very simple statistics, whereas for the vaccine effectiveness studies we use modelling, we compare people who have tested negative to those who have tested positive and match them on their underlining co-morbidities. It’s a completely different method which is much more robust and that’s what we want people to focus on.”

  9. I say good riddance… I’m glad he lets go of verified pros. more of those top notch pros available for the rest of us.

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